Bluetooth to reach 95% penetration by end of 2008: ABI Research

While we have been touting the trends for a while now, it's always nice to be backed up by research!  By reaching near ubiquity, Bluetooth measurement is quickly becoming the best way to conduct passive, inexpensive traffic monitoring and analysis out there.

“All Mobile Internet Devices will feature Wi-Fi from the start,” says ABI Research senior analyst Douglas McEuen. “That is the essential form of wireless connectivity that no MID will be without. But in addition, ABI Research expects to see Bluetooth reach a 95% penetration rate by the end of 2008.”

While many MIDs will include voice capabilities, they are larger than mobile phones, and for convenience some users will carry a low-cost phone as well. However many consumers still want an all-in-one device, and the handset/headset configuration enabled by Bluetooth will meet their needs. That will be one of the main rationales for its early adoption in MIDs.

More enhanced forms of connectivity are in the pipeline too. The first to reach the market will be“Bluetooth over 802.11,” also known as AMP (Alternate MAC PHY). It involves a software addition that will allow the device’s Bluetooth circuits to “piggyback” on its much faster Wi-Fi connection when it is necessary to transmit large amounts of data."

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DOOH Bucks Sluggish Advertising Market

My friends over at Daily DOOH provided a link to an article that's worth reading.  Unlinke other media, Out of Home (OOH) has been outpreforming the economy as of late and projections from media analyists Screen Digest/Goldmedia show an inpressive growth curve over the next 4 years.

From the post:

The report entitled ‘Digital Signage in Europe – The opportunities for digital out-of-home advertising’ examines the digital out-of-home media market in Western Europe and covers what we would term (rather succinctly we think) High Impact, Retail and Captive Audience sectors whereas they cumbersomely have to use the sentence “advertising on digital displays installed at various locations, e.g. airports, stations, trains, supermarkets and other public places”

Screen Digest forecast that digital out-of-home net advertising revenues in Western Europe will quadruple over the next five years from €158m in 2007 to a forecast of €626m by 2012.

Advertising on digital screens will grow from 3.1 per cent of the total out-of-the-home media expenditure in Western Europe to over 10% by 2012

Read the complete post here